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Duck!

So once a week my wife and I go for a walk. This past weekend we decided to go through the community center here in Sunnyvale, California. Our journey began with an oddly specific sign along some building construction.

It was indeed correct! We looked to our right and there was a path of travel, as pedestrians we took it. The entire thing turned out better than expected really. We made the journey down the road, passed (by not before entering) an In-N-Out Burger and then up to a fairly large lake. I’m not sure if the lake was at one time natural but it has been thoroughly altered by humanity. But this hasn’t necessarily been a bad thing.

The ducks at the lake (or pond whatever) were absolutely adorable. We saw adolescent ones like the ones pictured above (with a concerned adult duck watching us on the right).

She (I presume she, since female birds tend to be less colorful than males) patrolled the island and made sure no trickery by the gazing humans was going to jeopardize her children. The region is merrily devoid of predatory animals it appears and I’m happy these little ones found a niche.

Some adults that really couldn’t have cared less about our presence. You’ll note a fake swan in the top left corner. There are 3 of them here and I don’t for the life of me know why they are there. But they caused us to star at them like idiots for about 5 minutes trying to guess if they were fake or not.

You can’t tell in this image but these two are apparently hot for one another. The one in the center was making some pretty aggressive passes at the brown on in the top left. It was pretty funny to watch and I can tell they didn’t appreciate it because they made their way to the water where I was far less likely to snap shots at them.

I guess I can’t blame them. I doubt many people would be happy if I uploaded pictures of them here while they were putting their moves on one another.

Same couple different angle. I like this one (even though it’s a little light screwed) because the more colorful duck was giving me the eye. I should have taken video.

We’ve got the goose which apparently is a bouncer in these parts. When humans get too close to the babies the ducks will quack and the geese seem to show up. Now it could have just been coincidence but I thought it was a funny turn of events. I also didn’t get a shot of the other duck that came up and gave me an earful for getting too close to the collective ducklings.

Another shot for posterity. You’ll note the water is very blue. For some reason in California they dye the water blue. I guess so they know who is trying to swim in it?

Jesus ducks! They walk on water with the greatest of ease. This shot you’ll want to enlarge to get the full scope.

So yes. That’s the extent of the outing. It was fun, the ducks were adorable. I cleaned up the park a bit because litter just isn’t cool and felt refreshed when I got home. I’m sure we’ll visit again .